What are your weaknesses regarding philosophy?
When you do philosophy, what are some of the things you find yourself weak at doing? I will start.
1.) I have a very low tolerance for fancy-language bullshit. Can't stand that Latin crap, it seems so unnecessary. Unfortunately, this turns off my motivation to read things that might have been a good read.
2.) When I don't understand something, I can't just nudge it off like it's no big deal. Because it's not like a natural science where just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't right. In philosophy, you have to understand the arguments. So I will spend far more time on things than might be necessary to try to make sure I understand something.
3.) I frequently confuse my obsessive compulsive disorder for philosophy. That's my biggest problem.
4.) I get overly-ambitious regarding understanding a certain topic of philosophy, only to be drained and disappointed later on down the road when it still doesn't make any sense (like #2).
5.) I tend to not read original documents, although this is beginning to change. I'm developing my patience more. But I used to be almost exclusively SEP or similar.
1.) I have a very low tolerance for fancy-language bullshit. Can't stand that Latin crap, it seems so unnecessary. Unfortunately, this turns off my motivation to read things that might have been a good read.
2.) When I don't understand something, I can't just nudge it off like it's no big deal. Because it's not like a natural science where just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't right. In philosophy, you have to understand the arguments. So I will spend far more time on things than might be necessary to try to make sure I understand something.
3.) I frequently confuse my obsessive compulsive disorder for philosophy. That's my biggest problem.
4.) I get overly-ambitious regarding understanding a certain topic of philosophy, only to be drained and disappointed later on down the road when it still doesn't make any sense (like #2).
5.) I tend to not read original documents, although this is beginning to change. I'm developing my patience more. But I used to be almost exclusively SEP or similar.
Comments (12)
I think this a quite universal problem in academic circles, where a certain specific language is used, starting from abbreviations and technical jargons etc. basically to limit the possibility to "non-specialists" to participate in the debate. The objective is to make an own area where certain researchers are the "professionals", that their research topic or area of academic study is owned by a certain group that uses certain language.
In Economics it's math. Yet behind all that advanced fancy math equations are basically simple ideas about how the economy works, that could be well written in plain English. But that plain written ideas then could open critique from others that do understand economics, but aren't expert mathematicians. If an economist doesn't use math, then he or she is a light-weight and not a serious economist. As another example, one historian wrote a book and made the effort to open all the terms and make the text as understandable as possible that even a layman could understand the ideas. She was scolded and simply told that her text wasn't academic, which made her really furious.
In a similar way Philosophy uses certain "slang". You mentioned latin, I remember quite well Heidegger. When a lecturer at the university started that these terms cannot be understood properly in other language than German, and hence you have to refer to dasein even if you otherwise English (or in my case Finnish), I really started to loose interest in Heidegger. If the philosophical insight and idea isn't possible to translate, to put into other words, then there's a really a problem with the idea itself. Naturally one can refer to dasein for ease, and people simply do use jargon to ease the discussion, but it should be something that ought to possible to open in other ways. And the jargon never should be used to limit the discussion.
Smartasses tend to be dumbasses in disguise.
I'm sorry that was uncalled for.
Man, and they say I'm arrogant. This is beyond arrogance, this is a pathological case already...
On the language issue, I am tolerant of "fancy" words in the interests of being concise, and wordiness is more of a distraction for me than obscure words. I often question whether rambling arguments are trying to hide a weakness by repeating points or adding lots of irrelevant information.
Age (and/or my health) has given my thoughts a particular cloudiness that makes it difficult for me to discern if I have a worthwhile thought. I recall a time when I had a distinct sharpness to my thinking, which is no longer present. Luckily, the condition itself also makes it difficult for me to discern whether this is a actually a problem.
I tend to stay within the sub-discipline of ethics and I have a tendency to import optimism and idealistic outcomes into my moral thinking. I have a healthy amount of cynicism (in the contemporary meaning and not referring to the philosophy of the Cynics) and would categorize myself as a misanthrope, but on occasion I still get accused of being too idealistic.
I can't tell if you're making fun of yourself or everyone else. :/